Author: admin

Movie Theatre as Prism

Apparently Cineplex is looking to reopen as early as July of this year, if, when, and where it may be allowed to do so. Seems they plan to march on after an apparently failed takeover deal, and have measures planned to make visiting their venues safe, including reserved seating.

I don’t suppose there is anything they will do to prevent there being some person a couple of rows ahead who insists on looking at their phone throughout the movie.

Anyway, there is the simple escapism of it, and if you care for films at all there are some you just need to see on the big screen along with the big sound. Sometimes there is even artistic merit, with something to be gained for the mind and heart.

There is always the chance this mode of expression — even seeing the same content as we would experience on a home theatre system — will awaken us to some human connection, insight or beauty we would not otherwise have apprehended. One might look forward to a return of live theater for the same reasons.

If and when it can be done safely, I just might visit a movie theatre again. Truth is always seeking ways to be revealed. 

A Gift to One Another

There is a movement afoot to rename a well-known Toronto street, Dundas, because this particular Mr. Dundas is known to have worked, back in England, to obstruct the abolishment of slavery. It is one of a multitude of instances we are all seeing of the re-assessing of the appropriateness of names attached to streets, monuments, various buildings and places. Good.

We might also take an evaluating look at the practice of naming things after people in the first place. There is, of course, the potential that the person being honoured in this way might turn out not to be quite as honourable as thought, even as another time might judge one to be honourable.  It may even suggest to some that this is how you live on. You become successful and you live on as a street or a shiny building.

Silly? Maybe to you and me, but I wouldn’t discount it. Especially when a long-standing pandemic in this world is a lack of self-worth over against a world of material obsession. Consider the first thing we think of when it is asked what a person’s worth is.

There are thoughtful people who sense that our being is tied to something much bigger than anything our memory could be tied to, that our consciousness is tied to a reality beyond ourselves. More specifically and personally, there are those who live in confidence of a promise that is  more reliable than anything we experience as reality: “I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20b).

Each of us has the power that is to be found in its relinquishing–relinquishing power, that is. We live instead by grace, accepting–in contrast to much of the spirit of the world being protested against–that we are a gift to one another, and we live in anticipation, by that grace, of a greater, more enduring community to come.

Yes There Is Hope

Parents and day care operators in Ontario are struggling with permission for day care centres to open again tomorrow (June 12) with all that it takes actually to be ready for that. Also, here in Ontario, the government  has announced plans for postsecondary schools to open in the summer for students, particularly this year’s grads, to complete their school year, schools having closed in March. 

Beyond the logistics involved in these developments, it strikes me there is a common concern between the near end of schooling and care before it even begins: How to have healthy, whole humans, equipped for a world that will very quickly–again and repeatedly–become unrecognizable?

The specific knowledge and skills carefully and thoroughly to be developed need bearing in the special vessel of our acknowledged interdependent humanity.

Signs of hope among some leaders of today: Mayors Keisha Lance Bottoms (Atlanta) and Muriel Bowser (District of Columbia), Prime Ministers Yacinda Ardern (New Zealand) and Mette Frederiksen (Denmark), Dr. Bonnie Henry, Provincial Health Officer for British Columbia, and (take note of the name for future reference) Chika Stacy Oriuwa, 2020 University of Toronto medical school valedictorian. Note that even to this white male retired pastor from an agrarian patriarchal religion, it is women who come to mind.

There is hope in such leadership, and for each of us. I (still) find it expressed: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2a).

Something New in the How of Things?

There are two very different kinds of alliances revealed in recent times. 

1. Alliance in Support of Power

My impression is that there is one set of alliances at work to support certain interests existing in small towns and the chalets of the ultra powerful. Their core value and raison d’etre: white supremacy. They work through political channels and the workings of familiar social media and unfamiliar (to most of us) dark net sites. And they have prominent hiding-in-plain-sight agents. 

The point: The function of one set of alliances is to promote survival strategies of an elite who believe in and work for a very narrow and ultimately oppressive idea of what it is to be a human being. 

2. Alliance in Support of Principle

There is another alliance we have seen at work–on the streets of the United States, around the world, in big cities and small rural towns. It is a disparate alliance working not for power interests, but for principle. That principle seems to have to do with the equality and dignity of all humanity. And, not to over generalize or principle-ize it, it is focused on the very specific, long-standing, and supported-by-the-powerful, systematic abuse of blacks. It is making headway.

Dare I hope that not only is this specific thing being effectively addressed, but that something new is happening in the how of things? Real change seems to be coming, and it is not through conventional politics and its power-wrangling found everywhere from cabinet rooms and legislatures to too many town and church councils.

It is necessary to remember, however, that the best-intentioned alliances consist of human beings. This is both a strength and a vulnerability. It is essential, therefore, that in this, as in everything, we support the best in one another.

Humanity 101

What does (did, since he was killed) George Floyd of Minneapolis have to do with an Ontario long term care resident left with pressure sores, and/or in an environment of feces and cockroaches, crying out for hours?

What do both of the above have to do with, for that matter, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG)?

They are viewed and treated as less than human. It is widely recognized that seeing someone or a group of someones as less than human is the first step toward abuse. It could also be a spouse, a child, a homeless person.

“Human” perhaps applies to political party donors, well-connected cronies, or simply people who are “like me” (whatever that might mean). 

It ought to be especially disturbing that those who view some as less than human consider themselves people of faith. Apparently only certain people are made in the image of God.

Confound the Puny-Minded

So no classroom learning in Ontario until at least September. I have to preface whatever I say here with the acknowledgment that I am long past the stage of being part of any homeschooling situation. But I hope something. Even with having the vivid memory of how exasperating, heel of the hand to one’s (own) forehead the experience could be just to ‘encourage’ one’s children through regular homework assignments, I can only try to imagine the ups and downs and more downs of what’s going on in homes these days.

But, like I said already, I can hope something–that there is actually fun happening. And part of that fun would be to experience learning, together, that isn’t just part of the curriculum, as necessary and important as that is. The something I hope has to do with what I’ve heard any good teacher say, that teaching/learning is about learning to learn, loving to learn, everything, insatiably. 

Strangely enough, this hope arose for me in hearing about what is shaping up to be a distinctly unhealthy sort of global competition over the race for, and subsequent distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine. I wonder about the scientists involved in this, more than the people pulling the power strings, whose interest is, well, power. Control. Ownership. The world of nature teaches that collaboration benefits all who collaborate. Competition may make for better figure skaters and iPads, but it’s a lousy approach to genuinely helping one another in a global crisis. 

My guess, since I don’t personally know any scientific geniuses, is that the people that really matter, at the heart of the race for a vaccine (1) have stunningly impressive minds that can focus on one specific task, and (2) have amazingly curious minds with an Olympic-level curiosity about all things, out of which their specialization has emerged. 

But when your interest is power and control, we have seen over and over in the world’s autocrats, you not only do not want to know about some things, you don’t want to know about anything except what helps with your power and control and ownership, and you actively and ruthlessly suppress anyone who dares to ask bigger questions, or offer wider and important knowledge. Scientific facts seem especially to be scorned. 

I very much doubt that anyone who grows up with a wonder-filled curiosity about all things ever gets to that sorry state. 

So, once more, I hope something; that we would trust in the wisdom of the young, and reinforce their curiosity. Just watch. Without losing any of the wonder about all things, they will latch on also to specific paths leading to great discoveries to come. This will emerge in a generation that is unleashed, we would pray, from the control of those who are both powerful and puny-minded.

The Bundle Deal

It is reported that around 1.7 million Canadians work in the gig economy. And it’s growing, especially in the current reality. It is said to be part of a trend, where more and more of us are in temporary, casual, or otherwise unstable jobs (Toronto Star, May 19, 2020).

How can a person be encouraged if drawn into this growing new world? Depression is said to be an increasing problem in the months ahead, as we all struggle with getting to, well, whatever is yet coming–a second coronavirus wave, even more economic and social instability, even chaos?

I find resonating in me the often repeated observation in facebook posts: I will believe what you do more than what you say. But our identity is not any one thing we do, or job that we did not exactly aspire to (or choose, in spite of some tie-dyed 70s style psycho-babble-speak claiming that whatever situation you’re in is what you chose–especially unhelpful for those dealing with abuse). I am tempted to say there is honour in any work, and while I believe that, a person might not emotionally be in a space to hear it.

Instead, I am inclined to foist on this situation an observation or two about what makes you you and me me. First off: it’s not any one thing. Certainly not a job (those who love their jobs need to know this, too, if they are not going to be one-dimensional). Is not each of us a whole bundle of amazing stuff, with a unique personality, certain aptitudes, a heart for some concern or concerns no one else may even know about, and a special set of experiences. The idea here isn’t to make you feel worse about where you’re at (“What am I doing in this?”). It is to see that you and I have so much more going for us that any one thing we do. It all needs to be explored and brought out in some way. It is extremely rare to have a job in which all of this can be explored. In other words, at the risk of being corny, find some way to celebrate the wholeness of your life, the gift that  you are.

And maybe the self-realization will propel you to new things.

Has God Betrayed You?

With relaxation of COVID controls in  some areas, a few other things are coming back into the headlines. That includes protests, specifically, I have noticed, in Lebanon. Not getting into the weeds of this (as if I’m qualified anyway), but I have noticed a common theme through these protests: betrayal.

It would be unfair to portray protesters in general as It’s-somebody’s-job-to-look-after-me folks (although there will be some of that). There is a sense of betrayal in much of it. They are angry with governments that have not kept their word; they have broken contract with their people.

Anger. What’s behind it? There are three or four trillion experts on this. I am not one of them. But it is fairly clear to  even a non-psychologist like me that betrayal, eventually at least, leads to anger. I say “eventually at least” because I am supposing there could be at first, or mixed all together with it, confusion, numbness, denial–all that stuff. Personal betrayal is horribly painful, especially if you realize that it may not just be that you find you didn’t really know the person who betrayed you, but it may be that you long projected on the other what you wanted them to be, and it turned out they were not that person. So add guilt, however unwarranted, to the mix.

Now consider the preceding paragraph and consider that it is God (or the universe, or however you might be inclined to think) who is the betrayer. It is basic to pretty much all thinking about a universal superior being that he/she/it is simultaneously all-powerful and loving. So why COVID? Why am I exiled in my own home? Why don’t have a home in the best of times? Just in how we are conditioned to think about God we are also set up to experience God as The Great Betrayer. Broke his contract with me, that one: “God, did I ever really know you?”

We are invited to get into the weeds on this. Some follow one who said, flat out, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Jesus said this, it should be noted, on the way to showing that he had some credibility about who is to be trusted in this life and existence thing, and how it will all turn out.

I get two main take-aways from this: One, do not, ever, let fear overcome you. Two (not necessarily in this order), love, no matter what.

Go ahead, be angry with God. Talking anger with God is like talking weather with a fellow human: It at least starts the conversation.

Maybe Unleash the Hornets

Over the weekend in the Toronto area police converged on a parking lot where upwards of 200 vehicles were doing donuts and other stunts. As police appeared they took off to speed along the relatively empty roadways. Thankfully, there at least hasn’t been news of them adding to the burden of overstressed hospital staff.

In another display of brilliance, police clocked a young man in his parents’ Mercedes doing 308 km/h–three times the speed limit. A police spokesman said he had no words.

There are those who say that in the first nanosecond of space-time, everything that could ever exist or occur was present in possibility. Out of all of that, these guys chose these things to bring to reality.

How’s this for a reality to bring to fruition: If they like speed so much, put them on a track in go-carts with the scent of honey bees, and let loose a swarm of those giant “murder” hornets.

Save the Games for Games

Working from home. Home schooling. I hope families together at home these days are playing games together too, with no one getting too serious. (I am long past being in that setting, but I like to think I’m a good sport at games, except Scrabble. I hate losing at Scrabble.) That would miss the point, if there is one, and it would make it too much like work, and the games in that setting. Home, of course, should be free of that kind of game. Manipulation. Control. Looking better than the other who is supposed to be part of your team. 

Here’s a theory: People who play those destructive kinds of games at work don’t have enough fun playing real games. They are too much at home in a setting where there are substantial egos, quite prepared to wield whatever weight they have. They attack a straw person version of you. They preface questions with “Please don’t take this personally, but …”, counting on others to assume any concern you have is because you are taking it personally, or being defensive, or taking it the wrong way, or not in “the spirit in which it is intended.” Right. 

It would be great if folks can be free of that. It is great if, at home at least, you can have the seemingly simple thing an astounding number of people eagerly long for: a real conversation,  not infused with some agenda. That would be great for all relationships: life partners, parents and kids, whoever (It’s probably not gonna happen with your cat, however).

It would be wonderful if the home can be what I once heard church referred to as: a therapeutic world (one reason among many why any kind of abuse is horrible in either setting).